Donald Trump’s heavily anticipated Oklahoma rally was a heartbreaker in multiple ways. First, he was possibly trolled by K-Pop fans into thinking he’d have an overflow crowd, next he was dissed by artists like Pink and Cardi B for his inability to sell out Tulsa’s BOK Center. Then came a post-event notification from the estate of Tom Petty.
Signed by Petty’s widow Dana Petty, his two daughters Adria and Annakim, and their mother Jane, a social media statement alerted Trump they’d be sending cease and desist for his use of the 1989 radio staple “I Won’t Back Down.”
“Tom Petty would never want a song of his used for a campaign of hate,” the message read. “He liked to bring people together.”
The estate added that “we believe everyone is free to vote as they like, think as they like, but the Petty family doesn’t stand for this.”
The Florida-born rock star, who used Confederate flag iconography in the 1980s, called doing so “downright stupid” upon reflection in 2015. “I was pretty ignorant of what it actually meant. It was on a flagpole in front of the courthouse and I often saw it in Western movies. I just honestly didn’t give it much thought, though I should have,” he said in an interview with Rolling Stone. Throughout his career he struggled with celebrating his Southern roots and their darker connotations. In the same interview he discusses having photos of his band on a plantation removed from the inset of a live album. “It took a little time to get done, but it did get done. I still feel bad about it. I’ve just always regretted it. I would never do anything to hurt someone,” he said.
The Petty estate is just the latest rights-holder to confront Trump on the use of a song. Rihanna sent a cease and desist over “Don’t Stop the Music” in 2018, and Neil Young did the same about “Rockin’ In The Free World,” though he wrote “legally, he has the right to, however it goes against my wishes.”
Elton John, Adele, Guns N Roses, Pharrell, Queen, Prince, Aerosmith, Earth Wind and Fire and The Rolling Stones have also denounced the use of their songs at Trump events, according to The Guardian.
The Rolling Stones case is among the stranger uses. The song in question, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” is, on the face of it, a ludicrous sentiment to have sung in refrain when urging people to vote for you. By this logic, the campaign should have gone to the third track on Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Damn The Torpedos album, the song that goes “even the losers get lucky sometimes.”
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